New books

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This multidisciplinary book presents a coherent picture of Quebec's efforts to make French the only official language of Quebec society through the adoption in 1977 of the French Language Bill (Bill 101). The impact of the Charter on different sectors of Quebec society is evaluated. Has the Bill achieved its goal? Whose interests has it served? Does it promote the cause of Quebec Independence? French/English relations and educational provisions are also discussed.

Cummins. Jim
Bilingualism and special education: issues in assessment and pedagogy. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters, 1984. ix + 306 pp. £7.20. This book has a practical focus in that it examines the effectiveness of alternatives to traditional assessment and pedagogical practices for bilingual children. However, a central theme of the book is that progress can be made in improving practice only by means of a thorough re-examination of the assumptions underlying the entire special education enterprise, and particularly the diagnostic-prescriptive medical model that dominates much current practice. Drawing on an in-depth study of more than 400 psychological assessments of minority students, the book critically analyses constructs such as 'intellectual quotient' (IQ), 'learning disability', language proficiency' and 'bilingual proficiency', as well as the causes of minority students' underachievement. It is argued that many of the academic difficulties experienced by bilingual students are pedagogically-induced, in that both regular and remedial teaching practices frequently violate what we know about how language and other forms of knowledge are most effectively acquired. Within the context of the medical model, assessment practices locate the 'problem' within the child, thereby 'screening' the pedagogy from critical scrutiny. Despite its laudable intentions, much special education practice with respect to bilingual students is fundamentally misdirected. Concrete suggestions are made both for changing the structure of special education services for bilingual (and monolingual) students and for instituting more appropriate assessment and pedagogical practices.

Fawcett, Robin P. and others (eds.)
The semiotics of language and culture. Vol. II: Language and other semiotic systems of culture.
Volume II of this two-volume work [part I was annotated in Language Teaching, 17, 3 (1984)] contains parts 2 and 3. Part 2 offers three approaches to semiotic systems by 'semiotically aware' linguists, each of whom develop a treatment of specific cultural system which appears to have structural analogies to language: writing systems O'Toole) and environmental structure (by D. Preziosi). Part 3 contains three extended papers, each offering a different general scheme for the study of semiotics, by Lamb, Kelkar and Fawcett.
A general introduction to bilingualism in the world and in the USA, bilingualism in society, the bilingual child and the bilingual adult, bilingual speech and language. It aims to show bilingualism not as a problem or an asset but as a fact of life, and to allow bilinguals to speak about their own bilingualism. After discussing the problem of definitions and measurements, individual aspects of language contact are analysed, from the development of bilingualism to the behaviour of a bilingual individual. The phenomenon is studied from the viewpoint of the development of cultural identity, interpersonal and intergroup relationships. After attempting an interdisciplinary synthesis of the different levels of analysis, Part II examines some applications, such as bilingual education, secondlanguage learning and problems raised by interpreting and translation. As far as possible, the authors have tried to view these diverse aspects of bilingualism from a pluridisciplinary point of
An introductory course in phonology for linguistics students. The book is divided into two main parts, the first dealing with segmental phonology, and the second with suprasegmental aspects, including stress, rhythm and intonation. Finally there is a section on applied phonology, including dialects, historical change and language acquisition, all areas which provide the raw material for theoretical phonology.
While the author is sympathetic to orthodox generative phonology, he also offers a critique of it, and argues that theoretical phonology should be concerned with the fundamental phonological processes of language -processes which are found repeatedly in different languages at different periods of time. Because the book is designed for English speakers, examples and data are based mainly on English, although illustrations from a variety of other languages are also included. Every chapter includes structured exercises (with solutions) which are designed to encourage students to understand and use the data provided.
Modern grammatical theory assumes that natural languages are countably infinite collections of sentences, taking each sentence to be a finite object. There are thus exactly as many of them as there are natural numbers. Technically, then, languages are sets, whose size is given by the smallest transfinite cardinal number. This work argues to the contrary that the collection of sentences comprising each language is so vast that its magnitude is given by no number, finite or transfinite, thereby refuting the previously uncontroversial view that languages are recursively enumerable collections. At the same time, it is shown that most natural language sentences are not finite objects. Because no algorithm, Turing machine or grammar can construct or generate all members of a language, fundamental assumptions underlying contemporary grammatical theories are undermined; natural languages must be specified by nonconstructive systems, not generative grammars.
In developing their argument, the authors criticise the foundations of orthodox theories of grammar, stressing the consistency of their results with the platonist view of linguistic reality recently expounded by Jerrold Katz.
A starting point for teachers who want a realistic view of what the computer can do for them. It covers hardware, design and implementation, the learner and the machine, authoring packages, CALL in practice, and linking the micro to other devices.
A unified functional theory of the distribution of word-stress peaks in English words, taking into account regional and stylistic variation and aspects of form and structure. Adopting both a synchronic and diachronic approach, it deals fully with the concepts of common and agglutinative stress, stress-determining prefixes and finals, vacillation in stressing compounds, and predictability of stress in proper names. It includes a survey of the present state of knowledge as well as an extensive bibliography and index. This book deals with bilingualism, particularly as it relates to migrants and indigenous minorities. People from (linguistic) minorities often have to become bilingual in order to cope in the larger society, while majority representatives may voluntarily become bilingual. The book begins with a 'purely' linguistic coverage of bilingualism and then deals with the prerequisites and consequences of bilingualism from the perspectives of psychology and pedagogy. It then moves on from the family and the school to international comparisons of societies with different minority policies. It also analyses controversies about the education of migrants and minorities and places them in the wider political context.

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Among the topics covered are: the mother tongue, its development and significance and how it differs from languages learned later; definitions and measurement of bilingualism; different ways of becoming bilingual for different groups, in the school and the family; bilingualism, cognitive development and school achievement; semilingualism; guest worker policy and immigrant policy, and violence in minority education.